Mr Dawson

Philippe Mercier was a French-born painter of Huguenot descent who settled in England and became an important transmitter of French fête galante imagery to British audiences. His Mr Dawson from around 1740 is a straightforward male portrait commission, demonstrating that Mercier worked across genres including portraiture alongside his distinctive genre scenes. Mercier had introduced the informal conversation piece format to England in the 1720s under the influence of Watteau, whose work he had studied in Paris, and his portraits reflect the same relaxed informality that characterized his genre subjects.

The portrait likely shows Mr Dawson in an informal pose appropriate to mid-century English taste for the natural and unstudied. Mercier's French training gives his portraits a somewhat continental elegance that distinguishes them from the blunter manner of his British contemporaries.